Poison Pens 8: the art of confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is, speaking simply, the psychological process where you seek out things that agree with your opinion and dismiss those which do not.

It's most commonly acknowledged among market traders, who seek to be ever alert to the prospect that they could be wrong, and try to remain open to contradicting views. The reason they do this is because if they didn't, they'd quickly lose a lot of money.

But for most of us, confirmation bias isn't something we worry about. We like our own opinions, and we like those who share them, mostly. Sure, we might like people who disagree with us too. But being around them all the time would eventually become... disagreeable. So we don't.

Confirmation bias is one of the things that makes people interact with the media they choose. It's a long-standing canard that tabloid readers buy the redtops in order to confirm their own neanderthal point of view on the world.

In fact, it's much more likely that the very people levelling this argument, smug broadsheet readers, are themselves the biggest victims of confirmation bias.

Tabloid readers are very aware that the world consists of more than X Factor, celeb affairs and premiership football. They read them like some women read Hello! or Elle - for the escapism away from the humdrum reality.

Broadsheet readers, however, do not have the same level of disconnect with their chosen media. Let's take, as an example, the following piece from today's Observer, entitled 'US shaken by sudden surge of violence against gays.'

According to the title, there is a surge of anti-gay violence sweeping across America, which is a shocking prospect, not least to the gay-friendly readers of the Observer.

Yet, the evidence doesn't remotely support that. Within the article, the entire evidence offered consists of one suicide (well-reported, and subject to legal action towards alleged bullies), one quite vicious beating of a gay man and some vaguely euphemised 'other youths' in New York, a group of men who had a bin thrown at them, and a customer of the Stonewall Inn who was robbed.

I don't wish to diminish the seriousness of any of those individual acts, but frankly, all of that and much worse likely happened in any single Dublin housing estate last night. It doesn't add up to anything close to a surge of violence against gays in a country of 300 million people.

The article opens with the poignant scene of one brave man's 'lonely vigil' protesting for civil rights for gay people. Then swiftly moves on to inform us that, like him, 'Liberal America looks on aghast as virulent homophobic prejudice seems to have returned to its streets and cities.'

'Seems' is the key word here, the mealymouthed weasel word which excuses the writer from offering objective fact and allows him to present biased opinion in its place. It's a technique pioneered and perfected by the dark minions of the Daily Mail, where insinuating invective has been house style for many years.

'Seems', 'may be considered to be', 'is now thought by many' - such phrases are bullshit euphemisms. They are shorthand, telling the reader - here is what you should conclude, here is what you should be thinking.

Ironically, the very people who would be impervious to this technique in the Daily Mail are suckers for it in their own favoured papers, like the Observer.

This is confirmation bias in action.

The issue isn't whether there is a tidal wave of anti-gay violence in America or not. Clearly there isn't, and even the article is forced to concede in a single hurried line that the US is set to overturn the ban on gays in the military and Florida has just introduced gay adoption.

The issue is that the Observer, for some reason, has thought it legitimate to pretend that there is, using all the Daily Mail's rhetorical tropes of insinuation to depict skewed opinion in place of objective fact, when those facts do not add up to support their argument.

Journalism is becoming ever more debased, and nowhere is this more evident than in the broadsheets. Don't let confirmation bias blind you to that.

Poison Pens Five: HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!!!!

'Journalist asks question at press conference shocker!'

Seriously, I'm not making this up. About four national newspapers have all covered this non-story.

A journalist went to a press conference, plucked up the courage to ask a question, got an answer, then left.

I mean, OMG!!! All those scary old dudes there, asking about, like football and stuff. No wonder plucky Lisa has her hand totally to her chest in shock at what she's done (while posing for a photo, natch.) She, like, TOTALLY asked a question at a press conference?

I know! Like, who knew journalists did that? She should get a medal or something. Probably Fianna Fail are already tapping her up to run in the next general election.

Let's remind ourselves - this chick went to university. She trained as a journalist. Her daddy was a journalist before her. So she's seen her dad do this, she's educated and trained to do it. Why is it so shocking that she went as a journalist to a press conference and asked a question? It's her JOB to do that!

What so-fucking-what yawnathon will the Irish media treat us to next? 'Man rose early and drove electric cart to deliver milk'? 'Sun expected to rise in the East tomorrow morning'? 'Moon disappointingly not made of cream cheese'?

The media rightly get it in the neck sometimes for their sense of whats worthy of reporting and what isn't. People see endless tabloid headlines about Jade Goody, or Jordan, or David Beckham, and despair.

But this article is a spectacular classic of an even more debased genre - journalists puffing themselves and each other.

People do their jobs everyday without expectation of public acknowledgement, and many people do a damn sight more important work than asking Cristiano Ronaldo about his shorts.

Where are their articles?

People who perform surgery, fly airplanes, teach children or cure cancer, take note. Here's what a REALLY difficult job is like:

"It was mortifying from my point of view," said Lisa Cannon, "but at the end of the day that's what I was sent there to do."

Well done for spotting that, love. Yes, you went to a press conference and did your job. Congrats. Do we have to read about it in the paper everytime you do your job properly?

"It was a pretty difficult interview because I couldn't ask him any of the questions I really wanted to but I'm glad I did it," she continued.

Oh, hold on a minute. She didn't ask any of the questions she wanted to? Why not? Isn't asking some questions the sum total of her task? What stopped her? Did someone overpower her and clamp a chloroform cloth over her mouth before she could get the words out?

Perhaps she didn't do her job so well after all, if she couldn't ask questions at a press conference when your job is to do exactly that.

I don't mean to knock the girl - she's probably very nice and might well be generally excellent at her job, which I understand involves talking about clothes and make-up a lot on TV3. And it wasn't her decision to put this tripe into the national press.

My only questions remain for the national press themselves:

Why should the public give a fuck about this?

What is it doing in a newspaper?

How many 'Journalist did their job' stories do you reckon you could print before gangs of brain surgeons, airline pilots, firemen, nurses, teachers and other actually relevant people storm your newsroom and gag the lot of you with chloroform cloths?

Blogs V Jobs

What happens when the irresistable blog meets the immovable earner?

The thought crossed my mind recently as I noted the passing of two of Ireland's more popular blogs - Sigla and Present Tense.

Both are now firmly in the past tense, as their authors move on to pastures new and, crucially, paying.

I can appreciate the difficulties for a journalist who has a blog. You write for a living, which is hard enough. Getting paid for writing is even harder. So where's the motivation in doing it for free? A blog is in a way only encouragement for people to expect your work for nothing - including that nefarious species, editors.

I don't think it's a coincidence that both Sinead and Shane were functioning hacks before they blogged. I get the sense that blogging was something they tried and found ultimately incompatible with the day job.

Other hacks, like Richard Delevan and Sarah Carey, seem able to keep both plates spinning in the air. But then again, Sarah came to journalism via her blog being noticed by the Sunday Times, while Richard has long mastered the high wire act of keeping both in balance.

Maybe he manages it because his articles tend to be lengthy, considered pieces of work, whereas his blog is often home to much shorter items that have come to his notice.

There are other blogs by Irish journos. But by and large they're either by youngsters starting out on their career or they're done under pseudonyms.

Perhaps the former are just looking for an outlet, somewhere to practice their chosen trade, maybe even get noticed. Perhaps the latter are looking to put things into the public domain which their paymaster won't publish. I'm speculating here, of course.

The clash of cultures between 'old' media and 'citizen journalism' has become a somewhat hackneyed topic for debate, and to me it seems defunct as we're still in some sort of transitional arrangement wherein both forms are seeking to find a way to marry into each other, like a messy corporate merger.

But the intersection between blogging and the media does seem to produce regular casualties, and those casualties are nearly always the blog, which doesn't pay, as opposed to the media work which does.

It would be great to see more established journalists commence blogging in Ireland. But sadly the trend seems to be going in the opposite direction. Anyone remember this from one particular Irish media titan?

And he got paid for it. Just not enough, presumably, for it to continue into the present.

When the need and opportunity to progress a career in the media clashes with blogging, it's the blog which is the first casualty. Because they take time and consideration and thought, and they don't pay.

This isn't restricted solely to hacks, of course. Other good blogs have fallen by the wayside as their authors lacked time to blog because they were busy earning elsewhere.

And even though blogs are free to read, we're all a little poorer for that loss.

It strikes me that the payment available to bloggers (other than a pittance of adsense revenue or similar) is in the interaction from reader comments. You don't get that in the mainstream media (letters pages and radio phone-ins just don't carry the same capacity for initiating a considered debate instantly.)

It doesn't compare to getting a cheque in the mail, but it is a small reward when someone notes something you've blogged about and takes issue with it, or agrees fervently, or says you've opened their mind, or merely links to it from a blog of their own.

So if we're not going to pay bloggers cash, then it might be nice if more people left more comments as they bounce around the blogosphere. It won't pay the rent, but it will add further relevance and vitality to the medium, while also giving the authors some form of payback.

Job cuts at the Indo?

Rumours of imminent job cuts at Independent Newspapers are reaching my ears. Hopefully they aren't true, but the rumours do appear to be consistent and substantial.

The Sunday Business Post and Roy Greenslade have already hinted at this, but what I'm hearing is genuinely disturbing.

Is Gavin O'Reilly really intent on outsourcing the production tasks (taking journalistic copy and pictures and turning them into newspaper pages) on his national papers to an office in Armagh, where ad copy is already processed?

Job adverts have already appeared in Armagh, offering salaries approximately half of what staff in Dublin currently receive. And if this is what's going on, then what will happen to the 200 or so production staff set to lose their jobs in Dublin?

Not that the management like it, but the Indo Group is unionised, and I understand that the NUJ may already be involved at this stage.

If jobs are to go, then hopefully the union will be able to negotiate fair settlements for all.

But the scale of these cuts appear to be on a level much higher than had been previously forecast.

And if this is the case, it translates into a further death knell ringing for the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent and Evening Herald, which would be well on their way to becoming mere copy generating shops in the capital, while the backroom work of assembling newspapers is done outside the state.